Question - 675

Today's question is courtesy Matti. Whose POW card is this?

Answer: Gunter Grass,the German Nobel laureate whose membership in the Waffen-SS during WWII was revealed after almost 60 years. Arpit, Karthik, Krithi, Siddarth Pai and Deepanshu got it. Well done.

Question - 671

What is this a map of?

Answer: Hogwarts. I blanked out Hogsmeade, Hagrid's house and the Quidditch field. NJ, Iam, Karthik, Siddarth Pai, Jaggi, Jamie and Raghu got it. Well done.

Question - 668

Identify the person caricatured and also the blanked out word.

Answer: This is the cover of God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian by the inimitable Kurt Vonneghut. The good doctor himself passed away last week. Karthik, Raghu, Krishna, Mihir, Rajesh K, Matti, nice try and Krithi got it. Well done.

Question - 640

What are the squiggly white characters on the cover?

Answer: The Shavian alphabet - a simple, phonetic alphabet for the English language that would avoid the complications of the current spelling system. It was posthumously funded and supported by G.B.Shaw but eventually there was only enough money to publish one book in this alphabet. Krithi, Divya, giantamoeba, Saket and Matti got it. Well done. Trooper has link to a very nice quiz blog in the comments.

Question - 626

This building complex, a monument historique, looked like the image on the left in its heyday. After closing down in the late 1980s and falling into disuse, it is a common target of graffiti artists today. Identify the complex.

Answer: Piscine Moliter in France after which the protagonist is named in The Life of Pi. Divya, giantamoeba, Saket, Siddarth Pai and Krithi got it. Well done.

Question - 556

Identify the location and its significance.

Answer: The site of the Battle of the Red Cliffs, which served as the precursor to the era of the Three Kingdoms in China - described in the Chinese epic, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". mekie and Dinesh got it (though I still don't get Dinky's "Stannus occulus" reference).

Question - 532

Shown is a town on the pacific coast in the state of Oregon. X was commissioned to write a magazine article on a major ecological problem that this town faced. His article never got published but what did the research X did on the topic result in?

Hint: This question has garnered all of 0 hits so far. His article was title "They stopped the moving _____" and the ecological problem mentioned is actually visible in the picture.

Answer: The city is Florence, Oregon where the famous Oregon sand dunes are located. Their erosion and inward march into the city were studied by Frank Herbert for a newspaper article. He based his Dune universe and its desert ecology on his findings from this study. Hari, Mekie, Arvind, Krithi and Nitin Sunny got it. Well done.

Question - 454

Today's question is courtesy Rajesh K. Connect these works (not an exhaustive list).

Answer: The novels are Andromeda Strain, Gulliver's travels, Don Quixote and the Scarlet letter. They all employ a literary technique called the False document. By quoting extensively from sources that appear to be factual but in fact are not, such novels invite the reader to suspend his/her disbelief more so than usual. Aparna and Rajesh were the only ones to get it. Great job.

Question - 446

Identify the novelist.

Answer: The cover shows a very rare photograph of the notoriously reclusive J.D. Salinger with his daughter Margaret A. Salinger. The title is an obvious reference to Catcher in the Rye. DrDate, Karthik, Matti Tapaninen, Krithi, Arvind, Rajesh, Vetti, RIJO P, Renuka, Ramki, Nihar, Abstract Randomness, Raghu and Hirak got it. Well done.

Question - 443

Both pictures show the same location. Identify this spectacularly inaccessible place. This place also served as an inspiration for a novel and a movie. Name both.

Answer: This is Mount Roraima tepui in Venezuela. The inaccessibility of the place inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to place his Lost World on top of this mountain in a world where dinosaurs still survive. The recent Pixar movie Up which is itself inspired by Doyle's work is set in a landscape very similar to the one in this tepui and its surrounding areas. Raghu, Divya, Karthik, Pavan, An0n, Ramki, Iam, Ajinkya, Hari, Mekie, Mainak and Adi got it. Well done.

Question - 419

Connect the images in that order.

Answer: William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell contains the line "if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite". Aldous Huxley (2nd visual) described his experiences while taking the psychedelic drug Mescaline in a book titled "Doors of perception" taken from Blake's work. The band Doors (3rd visual) took its name from Huxley's book. This turned out to be a popular question. Raghu, v.chandrashekar, Iam, Vetti, AJ, Karthik, Manix, Ajinkya, Rajesh, Amresh, Kamal Rathi, Rithwik, Anand, Hasan, Rajeev, Arvind, Prachi, Hari, Jaggi, Mekie and Divya got it. Well done.

Question - 408

This painting depicts the landscape described in a famous poem. The object in the center (slightly to the left) is now famous in its own right. Identify the poem and the object.

Update: Looks like the visual gives very little to work with. Still more hints below and apologies for the bad visual.

Hints: The poem is from the 19th century but the object in the center forms the central theme of another work of literature (by a different author) from the 20th century. The poem is about the journey of a character towards the object in question. The 20th century work expands this quest into a vast epic that combines many other elements to the story line. The object in question is a tower alright but the work is not LOTR. The original poem is by (highlight to see) Robert Browning


Answer: The poem is "Childe Roland to the dark tower came" by Robert Browning. The title itself comes from Shakespeare's King Lear. Stephen King was inspired by this poem to come up with his magnum opus, the Dark Tower series in which a titular character named Roland undertakes an epic quest to reach a dark tower. I haven't read any of the books but some of my friends who are Stephen King fans swear by them. Raghu, Renuka and Mekie got it. Well done.

Question - 367

Identify the duelists.

Answer: Eugene Onegin and Vladimir Lensky by Repine. Arguably the most famous duel in literature was made more ironic by the fact that Pushkin himself died in a duel.

Answered by: Arvind, Corina, Ashwin, Swapnaa, Hari, P and Mekie.

Aside: For those interested in reading the poem, try Charles Johnston's version of Eugene Onegin. Despite V. Nabokov's quibbles in accurately translating Pushkin in English verse, he does an outstanding job in translating the meaning of poem while maintaining the rhyme and meter of the Onegin stanzas. {steps off soapbox}.

Question - 329

Identify the author and his book (Question by Manix)

Answer: Carl Jung's Red Book that is being published years later with beautifully hand-drawn illustrations by Jung.

Answered by: Srivats, Dinesh, Trevor and Anonymous. Extra credit to Trevor for finding the source!

Question - 317

What process is being shown in the first picture? The second picture is a famous example. What is going on here?

Hint: George Bernard Shaw

Answer: The Great Vowel Shift. The second picture showed Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales which is written in Middle English. No one really knows how Middle English is pronounced but end vowel sounds are not dropped which makes delightful reading. The Vowel Shift occurred after the Tales were written which resulted in some really un-phonetic pronunciation of words in Modern English. The hint to GBS was in reference to the disconnect in orthography and pronunciation.

Correctly answered by: Iam, Karthik, Srivats, and Dinesh

Question - 310

Which alien life form is shown?

Update: There has only been one correct response so far. Here are some additional hints. The visual is an artist's impression of an alien life form from a novel written by the guy in the first visual below. There have been two movie adaptations of this novel and a screen shot from the newer one is shown in the second visual. I suppose the answer can't be worked out even with the clues unless you already know it but I wanted to draw attention to one of my favorite science fiction novels/theme.

Answer: The alien life form is the mighty, unknowable, truly alien Solaris from Stanislaw Lem's novel by the same name. One of Lem's favorite themes is the fundamental impossibility of meaningful communications with an alien species. There were two famous movies made out of this novel - one by legendary Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and more recently one by Steven Soderbergh starring George Clooney. Srivats was the only one to get it without the additional hints. tsp, Prachi, Hasan, Manix, Swapnaa, Rajesh, Ajinkya, Raghu and Divya got it with the hints. Well done all.

Question - 279

Which role is the character in the TV screen playing? Where is this screenshot taken from?

Answer: This is big brother from Apple's famous ad (directed by Ridley Scott) during the 1984 super bowl. The ad is widely regarded as one of the best of all times and is influenced by Orwell's classic 1984. Hari, Iam, Raghu, Rajeev, Hirak, Trevor Burnham, Renuka (who went for the equally correct 2004 ad which had an ipod digitally added to the hammer thrower) and Johnny Walker got it. Well done.

Question - 270

Whose statue? Which not so common idiom is a literal description of the statue?

Answer: The statue is that of the ancient mariner from the famous Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the poem, bad luck follows the mariner who kills an albatross and the rest of the crew force the mariner to wear the dead bird around his neck. This gave rise to the idiom albatross around the neck meaning an unwelcome burden. Hari, nice try, Schmetterling, Raghu, Srivats, Swapnaa and Adi got it. Well done.

Question - 240

The person shown in the first visual left the things shown in the second visual. Identify him and the place. The logo in the third visual can be taken as a clue to the identity of the man/location.

Answer: The first visual shows the mysterious "Poe toaster", an unidentified man who has been visiting Edgar Allan Poe's grave every year on his birthday since 1949. The visitor drinks a toast in Poe's honour and leaves a cognac bottle and some roses at his grave. The logo is that of the Baltimore Ravens, a NFL team located in Poe's home town and which takes its name from his most famous poem. Hari, Srivats, Raghu and Manix got it. Well done.

Question - 222

Today's question is courtesy Iam. Connect all the visuals. The visual in the center is a clue to the connect.

Answer: The connect is portmanteau words - words made by combining two other words. The words are (from top left anticlockwise) motorcade (motor + cavalcade), chunnel (channel + tunnel), wikipedia (wiki + encyclopedia), spork (spoon + fork), breathalyzer (breath + analyzer), napalm (naphthenic + palmitic) and Tanzania (Tanganyika + Zanzibar). The visual in the middle is John Tenniel's illustration for Lewis Carroll's glorious Jabberwocky. The poem is replete with nonsensical portmanteau words of Carroll's own invention some of which have entered the English language today (eg., chortle - chuckle + snort). Srivats, Rajeev, Anshul, Trevor Burnham, Manix, Adi and Avi got it. Well done.